A primary message from the amphibians, other organisms, and environments, such as the oceans, is that little time remains to stave off mass extinctions, if it is possible at all. (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Wake and Vredenburg 2008).
This page introduces the reader to amphibians and their habitats in the Central Interior of BC. This web page includes a primer on amphibian ecology and other information that will assist you in the techniques you need to know to identify different species and some simple techniques that volunteer citizens can learn to effectively monitor amphibians living close to your home. Please visit our other section on Citizen Monitoring to learn what data you need to record. In the GoogleEarth map below you can click around locations in the Prince George area tagging representative sites where we know amphibians are easily located. You can help us by expanding the content of this map as you find and then report on amphibians living in your local area (ecology@namos.ca). You can also help us by sending us photos or drawings and with your permission we can post them into our website as we expand our sections on citizen science and public outreach.
There are 5500 species of amphibian with approximately thirty nine species found in the province of British Columbia. Only five inhabit the Central Interior of British Columbia. However, there is a very good reason why a non-profit amphibian conservation society is needed for amphibians in a region having low measures of species biodiversity. While there are few native amphibian species, British Columbia has a very large biomass of amphibians. Biomass is defined simply as the weight of living material and it is an important functional component of biodiversity that also needs protection. This section explains why we are concerned about the loss of amphibian populations and why they are important to communities living in the Central Interior of BC.
The First Nations peoples hold a close connection with amphibians in the Central Interior of BC. Tribal chief David Luggi of the Stellat’en First Nation is a member of the Central Interior frog clan. Other First Nations leaders in communites and bands of the Central Interior of British Columbia (e.g., Lheidli T'Enneh are members of frog clans. Amphibians also appear in totem poles, local art work, and are valued by most cultures of the world (Collins & Crump, 2009). However, there are also many people who know very little about amphibians because they often remain hidden under logs and beneath the soil.
Land development is putting most of the worlds amphibians in peril. There are fourteen amphibians listed in peril in the western regions of the US (Pacific Rivers Council, Endangered Amphibians of the West). The western toad, for example, is listed in peril south of the border making the northern parts of its range in Prince George an important refuge for this species. For this and other reasons the western toad is yellow listed in British Columbia and of special conservation concern. Otherwise, there are no endangered amphibian species in the Central Interior of northern British Columbia. However, populations are fragmented, threatened and declining as land is developed, forests are cleared, and wetlands are drained. Populations contain vast reservoirs of the planets biodiversity and they are the important components that support and regulate the planets ecosystem functions.
A density-equalizing cartogram showing global amphibian species biodiversity (from Wake and Vredenburg 2008)
The adjacent density-equalizing cartogram shows levels of biodiversity for amphibian species across the globe. People also express an affection for the diversity of life, but amphibian species diversity is very low in this region of the planet. Less than 1% of all amphibian species occur in Canada, and only one species of salamander (Long-toed salamander) covers much of the Central Interior. British Columbia is an amphibian coldspot because there are few species relative to other areas of the globe. The biodiversity of amphibians, however, still remains high because there are many populations that distribute a significant amount of biomass into almost every wetland and forest of the province. While species biodiversity is undoubtedly important for conservation, it does not provide a direct measure of the ecological resources that are generated by the work of amphibian populations. There are more populations than there are species. However, populations are being threatened and dissapearing at a greater rate than species are. It is estimated that life on earth is loosing 1800 populations every hour in tropical forests alone (Hugues et al., 1997). Kareiva and Marvier (2003) give an excelent review of why species biodiversity coldspots are as important to invest in as are species biodiversity hotspots.
Amphibian populations work soils and wetlands by distributing nutrients as they migrate about and prey on insects, worms, and other kinds of bugs. Amphibians are efficient ecological assimilators because 50% of the food they eat is converted into biomass. They do not maintain a high body temperature like birds and mammals that can only assimilate 5% of their food with the rest of their energy expended on maintaining body heat. The effecient energetic work of amphibians produces ecosystem services that are best measured through biomass. The amphibian biomass acts as an ecological conveyor belts to pass energy from the bugs and insects they eat on up to larger predators in the ecosystem (Collins & Crump, 2009). The loss of populations and decline in ecological services suggests that endangered species listings miss a great biomass and ecosystem services. Amphibians that offer these efficient services are being ploughed under and marginalized by land development. Ducks Unlimited Canada provides effective factsheets to explain what ecological services are and give many examples linking the benefits of wetland ecology to the economy. Although the connection is not understood by most, there is a relationship between amphibian ecology and the economy, but the link is more than the multi-million dollar pet trade or sale of frog leg delicacies. As keystone predators in wetland and soil ecosystems, amphibians support the economy and well-being of our communities as effective agents increasing the ecological production of natural resources that depend on the soil, such as agriculture, timber and fiber industries. One of the more notable well-being services provided by amphibians is the regulation of mosquitoe populations (DuRant & Hopkins, 2008; Raghavendra et al. 2008). Another example, is the thrill they offer to children who get to catch frogs and salamanders and learn about nature. These are the reasons why we need to conserve our amphibian populations and we need the help of citizen volunteers to monitor amphibian populations and to raise awareness on the importance of our local amphibian ecosystems.
Click on the amphibian pictures in the sections below and you will be directed to the BC frogwatch pages. Since these sites are already established with lots of information about each species, the NAMOS BC pages provide only general information or information that is unique to amphibians of the Central Interior. Surprisingly little data has been accumlated to map out the full extent and ecological associations for these species in the Central Interior, a task that NAMOS BC is working to build upon. For a field guide to the amhibians of British Columbia, the Corkran and Thoms (2006) guide is highly recommended. Otherwise, you can take a global tour of amphibians in GoogleEarth.
Do you and/or your family go hiking or fishing, or perhaps you have a pond in your backyard that has frogs, toads or salamanders living in it? If this is so - then you can help us on our mission to conserve amphibians. If you are interested in helping you can either send us a one time observation or you can become more involved and we will help to train you to be an effective citizen volunteer. NAMOS BC is here to assist local citizens in amphibian monitoring techniques. We schedule and host training sessions at different times of the year for people who are interested in learning about and conserving amphibians in our area. Please contact us if you are interested in becoming a citizen volunteer (ecology@namos.ca) and we will contact you when the next training session is booked. In the meantime, these pages will we can help to get you started on your own.
Location is one of the most important pieces of information that we require for your monitoring efforts. Google Earth is a free online program that will allow you to identify the location of your monitoring efforts so that you send us the coordinates. The following GoogleEarth video is a tutorial on how to obtain latitude and longitude coordinates. If you do not have a copy of microsoft office, you can download a free and fully functional productivity suite through OpenOffice. The Calc program in OpenOffice or Excel in Office is where you can record and save the data you collect. The only All that is required is that you visit a site at least twice per season with a two week break between revisits. A site can be a pond, a stream, a stretch of trail, road, or a section of a forest - it is the place that you search. Every time you visit your site, you can look for amphibians. Bring a notebook and bring a kid. When you discover or find an amphibian, record the species that you see, the location, and the date you found it. As we collect this information we actively maintain a database on amphibian locality records for the Central Interior of BC that is used to update species distribution map and conservation research in our local area. If you would like to help our cause by taking photographs of amphibians or by drawing pictures and sending these to us (ecology@namos.ca), with your permission we will post examples of the artwork onto our website.
Most people think amphibians as aquatic organisms. However, many amphibians spend most of their lifeliving under decaying logs and digging in the soil of forest ecosystems. The long-toed salamander, (Ambystoma macrodactylum = 'mole salamander') is our only salamander, which makes it a keystone species that burrows deep into the soil and through decaying logs where it feeds on bugs. This is important ecological information that relates importantly to the forest economy of British Columbia. Stewardship and conservation of amphibians is one of the most effective and natural means to spread nutrients and fertilize soils. Amphibians provide this ecological service for free.
Knowing where amphibians live will help you if you are to become a citizen volunteer. Amphibians are active immediately after the first snow melt. During late April and early May there is lots of migration activity as adults move out of their winter hibernation spots, move toward breeding ponds, and find a mate. Salamanders are the first to arrive and lay eggs, followed by spotted & wood frogs, then the western toads. During the summer months of June until August they move to different areas, salamanders and toads move into adjacent forests while spotted and wood frogs move among small wetlands and streams to feed. A second set of mass migrations of toadlets and juvenille salamanders occurs in late August. The juvenilles can be found along roads, bike, quad, or skid trails where they experience high levels of seasonal mortality.
Springtime is an important time for monitoring the amphibians. Capturing the first date of emergence and records of their activities over long-term allows to track the effects of climate change that will alter the timing of events. During the breeding season, adult salamanders migrate to the ponds and small lakes and can be found in abundance under logs that litter the shoreline and riparian zone. Frogs and toads can be found along the waters edge or swimming in the water. Most amphibians return to same body of water where they were hatched, but a few of the younger individuals will migrate and occupy new areas. Amphibians of the Central Interior are predominantly pond breeders, but wood and spotted frogs can be found hopping about in small to slow running stream channels. Eggs are laid in abundance and contribute nutrients to the watershed biochemistry, this is another important ecological service that feeds nutrients into our watersheds. Eggs hatch and the larvae start feeding. Frogs and toads eat plants and algae as tadpoles. Salamanders are mostly carnivorious feeding on daphnia and other bugs in the pond ecosystem. Late August to mid-September the amphibians metamorphose and start migrating onto land. This is perhaps their most vulnerable stage of life.
People are often curious about amphibians and what they do during the winter time. These next few paragraphs provide some interesting facts about amphibians during the winter. Living in the Central Interior of BC means that you have to adapt to the cold weather. Wood frogs, for example, are able to withstand freezing, but other species must burrow down to areas below the frost line. The physiology of overwintering states for amphibians (e.g. Tattersall and Ultsch, 2008) is a difficult topic to study, because you would need to locate and then dig the amphibians up from under under the snow and frozen ground; which has been done! The scientific terminology for the different metabolic states include:
1. Hibernation or overwintering: A physiological aptation allowing for winter survival through reduced metabolism and activity to save on energy.
2. Estivation or aestivation: State of reduced metabolism, inactivity and reduction in response to lack of water or high temperatures. Estivation sometimes resembles hibernation during a winter dry season.
3. Dormancy and Torpor: Reduced metabolic state where the animal does not respond, feed, or move about. There is no apparent signs of normal cognitive motor activity.
All amphibians of the Central Interior of BC hibernate during the winter months. Wood frogs are able to completely freeze and become active after they thaw in the spring. Long-toed salamanders store protein reserves in their tails that serve a dual functon as a nasty secretion that makes a mouth sticky and predators ill (possibly death). Amphibians are sometimes spotted on top of snow banks as the early spring melt starts. These animals are surprisingly active despite the freezing cold weather. Understanding the over-winter survival and physiology of amphibians relates importantly to climate change, which will undoubtedly impact the metabolic activities and the seasonal dynamics of amphibian ecology in unpredictable wayss.
Long-toed salamanders can live six to ten years of age and are mostly terrestrial organisms. They burrow into the soil during the winter months, often following tunnels made by small mammals, but going below the frost line in a site offering proper drainage to avoid freezing. They feed, and hide under and in coarse woody debris.
The eggs of long-toed salamanders are very distinctive compared to the other amphibian species in our area. They are laid singly or in clumps and are submerged while being attached to sticks, reeds, other plant material, or on the muddy bottom of wetlands. The larvae have a distinctive look with their flaring gills and tapered body. The larges adults reach sizes that just exceed 6 cm in length. There are four fingers on the front limbs and five on the rear. They have a yellow, green, or tan stripe that runs down their back. This stripe is used as a warning to predators. When provoked or threatened, the long-toed salamander will either drop its tail (autotomize) and run, or it will wave its tail in the air and excrete a white defensive liquid. The autotomized tail bit wiggles as it remains behind and the salamander sleeks away. The defensive liquid is a sticky adhesive even when your fingers are wet and it is likely to be toxic. Predators, such as garter snakes, may evolve resistence to these toxins and there are many large populations of garter snakes in the Central Interior. NAMOS BC is concentrating much of its efforts toward studying the long-toed salamander populations surrounding the UNBC campus. We are taking notice that every year there is a mass mortality that occurs around the ring road as juvenilles migrate onto the pavement and get hit by traffic.
NAMOS BC is conducting extenstive ecological surveys of the long-toed salamander populations in the Central Interior of BC. We are documenting the type, class, and occurance of coarse-woody debris where long-toed salamanders occur. Knowledge and understanding this component of structural diversity of coarse-woody debris is important for ecological land management in context of forest practices (e.g., Stevenson et al., 2008) Salamanders are amazingly capable creatures as they can dig into the smallest crevice with ease, making them very difficult to locate. They lay eggs in small stagnant water bodies, small lakes, bogs, wetlands, marshes, and sometimes (but rarely) in slow moving streams. It takes one to two years for the hatched larvae to fully develop then metamorphose into the adult life stage. Most salamanders metamorphose in one year, but at elevations above 1500m the larvae can survive under ice and defer metamorphosis to the second year. Once the salamander metamorphoses and leaves the pond around late August to mid-Septemeber, it sets out through the riparian habitat into the forested lands where it feeds.
Migration occurs mainly during moist summer nights under the cover of darkness. Every spring the adults return to the same breeding ponds, only a few juvenilles leave their place of birth to find new populations. The courtship dance for the long-toed salamander is similar to other species of Ambystoma and very similar to its cousin, Ambystoma jeffersonianum. The males directly approach females and grab on, while the females try to rapidly swim away. Some males will clasp a female from behind her forelimbs and start to shake; this is called amplexus. In one of their more unusual behaviours, males will sometimes clasp other frogs or salamanders during the breeding season and shake them as well. The male only grabs with the front limbs and never uses his hind limbs. During the courtship dance he rubs his chin side to side pressing down on the female's head. The female struggles but later becomes subdued. Males increase the tempo and motions, rubbing over the female's nostrils, sides, and sometimes the vent. During this period of contact the salamanders exchange pheromones across their skin. The pheromones set the mood and the female eventually becomes docile. The male moves forward with his tail positioned over her head, raised, and waving at the tip. If the female accepts the males courtship, the male directs her snout toward his vent region while both move forward stiffly with pelvic undulations. As the female follows, the male stops and deposits a spermatophore, and the female will move forward with the male to raise her tail and receive the sperm packet. The full courtship dance is rarely accomplished in the first attempt. Females deposit their eggs a few days after mating (Slater, 1936; Anderson, 1961)
Spotted frogs are highly abundant in the local Prince George area and are the most common frog encountered. In the spring months of April and May, the frogs can be heard in ponds and lakes as the males call out to females. The males develop a salmon pink skin during the breeding season and during this time a person bare hands will have a burning sensation if you hold one. They mostly remain tied to wetlands with fewer individuals migrating beyond the riparian zones.
More information to be posted, please check back soon.
Wood frogs do not live as long as salamanders do. They live a maximum of up to 4 years of age (Sagor et al., 1998). The wood frog is a small brown frog that grows up to 5cm in length. It usually has a characteristic dark triangular patch of skin behind the eye, but individuals can vary greatly in their size, skin color and pattern. Since individuals vary so much in their appearance, it is best to distinguish adult wood frogs from adult spotted frogs by comparing the shape of the head (See: Spotted Frog vs. Wood Frog).
The wood frog is distributed across Canada and is the only amphibian to cross the artic circle. This species is freeze tolerant by building up stores of glycogen that is distributed to all the major organs once ice starts forming on the skin (Conlon et al., 1998). Wood frogs are known as explosive breeders. The males form nuptual pads on their front feed during the the breeding season, which starts in early April after the first snow melt. The males call out to females and other males using sounds that range from brief clucking to a longer call that is likened to the sound of rubbing a tight baloon (Stebbins, 2003). The males seek out and move toward the larger chorus of other males, which leads to a larger gathering (Bee, 2007). Adults can be found mating and laying eggs until the middle of June. Wood frogs are locally active until the beginning of September when they start prepare for hibernation (Campbell, 2004).
There is no mistaking a western toad. If it has warty skin and it lives in the Central Interior of BC, it is a western toad. The western toad comes in a variety of colors, ranging from brown, green, and red or a mixture of these colors. They are voracious predators of the forests and wetlands eating a variety of bugs and slugs. They are common along forest trails In our area, but they are often killed on roads and trails by bicycle tires, quads, and other vehicles. The western toad is on the provincial yellow list because it has disappeared from much of its southern range. This makes our area a safe haven for the survival of the species and with your help we intend to keep them around for our children's children to see in places like Shane and Ferguson Lake.
Western toads are a most gentle creature of the woods and wetland. They are easy to catch, but they can hop and swim along fast when they need too. Their skin is warty and they are cute. You can pick one up, but their skin is poisonous - so don't put one into your mouth! They make a noise like a squeek toy when they become frightened. The western-toed breeds later in May in the Prince George area. They are both and aquatic and fully terrestrial animal. Their eggs are laid in long strings and entire pond bottoms can be covered black by the millions of tadpoles that hatch. In the picture above a tiny male is mating with a female nearly three times his size! The long strings of eggs can also be seen in this camera shot. They lay their eggs in Prince George in mid May and the metamorphosing tadpoles have been seen transforming into adults then leaving Ferguson Lake on July 18, 2009 or from Shane Lake in late August
Western toads lay large numbers of eggs that hatch and grow into tadpoles that can literally blanket an entire wetland. The images shown here were taken from a wetland in northern BC that was about 0.5 ha in size and approximately 90% of the clay bottom was covered in black by the tadpoles feeding on algae and running several centimers deep. This image gives a degree of perspective on the amount of biomass that these animals supply in the wetlands and into the forests of BC. They come out in large numbers at night along trails in the the Prince George city park, Forests for the World.
Pacific Tree frog populations are found approximately 75km South of Prince George just north of Quesnel. It is possible and even likely that the distribution extends further north and into our immediate area. We are planning expeditions to potential locations. Keep posted and we will be inviting others to join us or let us know if you would like to join us on expeditions to find the Pacific Tree frog (ecology@namos.ca).
The wood and spotted frogs can be very difficult to distinguish. Study the following image to learn how to distinguish these species. Notice how the eyes of the spotted frogs look more up and outward, whereas the wood frogs eyes look more down and forward. The difference in the eyes is especialy apparent in image panels A4 vs. A5. Panels B4 and B5 show how the spotted frog has a more rounded head shape beyond the eyes, whereas the snout of the wood frog is more pointed. Spotted frogs also sport a characteristic salmon color in the groin area especially during the breeding season. The numbers at the bottom of each image are used to track the image files in the NAMOS BC amphibian database. These numbers link information in our database where we can learn about each individual that we capture, such as their body weights and other types of measurements.
Without practice the eggs are difficult to distinguish from spotted frog eggs. Wood frog eggs are laid in clusters ranging from 40 to 1500 eggs in each globular mass that are deeply submerged to slightly submerged and firmly attached to branches or grass. Each egg is 1.5-5 mm in diameter with two egg envelope layere. Spotted frog eggs are laid in clusters of several masses ranging from 700 to 1500 eggs that are not attached to vegetation and can protrude above the water survace. Each egg is 2-15 mm in diameter with a single outer envelope. The clusters tend to be larger in size . It is easy to rule out other species when comparing wood vs. spotted frogs eggs in the Central Interior of BC. To distinguish wood from spotted frog eggs, however, requires a trained eye. If you are unable to distinguish the species, simply recording Rana sp? in your notes will tell us that it is either a wood frog (Rana sylvatica) or a spotted frog (Rana luteiventris). Once the wetland is mapped in our records we will work to visit these sites to distinguish what species are present.